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Carve-Out: Union Plans Grandfathered

RUSH: Betsy McCaughey has discovered that the union carve-out is that all of their plans are grandfathered in. Do you know what that means? What that means is that none of the union health care plans have to meet the new Obamacare mandates, so they're going to continue to be cheaper. They will get to keep their doctors. Union insurance holders will get to keep their plans. You can't, because your plan wasn't "grandfathered."

But the unions have been. "Sec. 1251(a)(1) of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) says that no one can be required to give up a plan in effect on March 23, 2010, when the law was passed. Those plans are 'grandfathered.' But following that guarantee is a list of costly requirements that made it difficult for insurers to keep offering your plan." It was not possible for them under the terms of Obamacare.

So you were not grandfathered.

The unions are.

They get to keep their plan.

They get to keep their doctor -- if their doctor stays working.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, it is true the unions are whining about Obamacare. So I must admit I'm a little confused. Betsy McCaughey in her piece says that the union health care plans are grandfathered and they're gonna be able to keep their doctors and they're gonna be able to keep their plan, for example, because they were grandfathered. Here, again, is the law. This is from her piece in The Daily Caller today. "Sec. 1251(a)(1) of the Affordable Care Act says that no one can be required to give up a plan in effect on March 23, 2010..."

This applied to everybody. Remember, we mentioned this to you the other day, that the only reason you can't keep your plan is because Obama is playing dictator. Obama was out lying through his teeth, knowing full well he was lying. He doesn't care, folks. Everybody wants to talk about, "Does he know? Does he know?" He doesn't care! This is all minutia. It's whatever it takes to get where you're going.

It doesn't matter how you get there, doesn't matter whether you like it. Remember, these people, in their minds, are pursuing a higher moral cause. Anything's permitted -- lying, cheating, stealing, whatever -- because they're trying to defeat us, and that is a moral imperative to them. So there's no such thing as lying. It's just whatever it takes is permissible. So again, according to the law, "Sec. 1251(a)(1) of the Affordable Care Act says that no one can be required to give up a plan in effect on March 23, 2010, when the law was passed.

"Those plans are 'grandfathered.' But following that guarantee is..." This is not the law. This is Betsy McCaughey writing. "But following that guarantee is a list of costly requirements that made it difficult for insurers to keep offering your plan. It gets worse," she says. "Union plans were 'grandfathered' with none of those fine-print tricks and exceptions" that Obama then imposed on the insurance companies. So Obamacare itself, you can look at this as a violated contract, if you want.

I mean, it's a statutory law, but in the law it says if you like your policy the day this thing's signed into law, it can't be taken away from you. You're grandfathered. But Obamacare mandates on the insurance companies made it impossible for them to continue to provide your plan as you like it, and this is why Valerie Jarrett and those people are out there saying, "We didn't change your plan. The insurance companies did it." It's just more disingenuousness, more lying.

Because it is their law that made the insurance companies cancel plans. They had to comply with the law, and those compliances are what blew up your plan. It's being in compliance, whether it was grandfathered or not. So her point is that the unions have a carve-out, and she quotes part of the law for Section 1251. I'm not gonna read it to you 'cause it's legalese. It goes on to say that no subsequent mandates can make the unions change their plans, unlike the rest of us.

So just to clarify, the regime claims that most plans will be grandfathered in, but it isn't true because the insurance companies tweak their plans all the time, and remember... This is so frustrating. Sorry, folks. I mean, I remember so many things and my mind is exploding here. Do you remember when we were talking about this three years ago, and we were talking about the "tweaks"? All the insurance company would have to do would be to raise your premium a penny and it constituted a change that would destroy your grandfathered status.

Your plan had to stay what it was after Obamacare was signed in order for you to keep your plan. All the insurance companies had to do was cancel somebody in your plan -- it didn't take much to change it -- and that destroyed the grandfather status. Well, the Obamacare law itself mandated that insurance companies change their plans whether they wanted to or not, and that destroyed the grandfather status for you. But that is not the case according to Betsy McCaughey for the union plans.

They can't be changed and will not lose their grandfather status. Here's how she explains it. "The law also left open the possibility that the president could impose additional requirements on grandfathered plans (except union plans.) Two months after Obamacare was passed, the IRS, Deptartment [sic] of Labor, and Department of Health and Human Services -- all reporting to the president -- churned out hundreds of additional rules to make it even harder for grandfathered plans to survive."

Now, the real point of this is Obama never intended for you to keep your plan. If you could keep your plan, there would be no reason for Obamacare, and there would be no further progress towards single payer. It was just something to lie to you about to get your vote in the 2012 election, and to get your support. It was an out-and-out lie, folks. There's no other way to say it, and you could look at it as a broken contract, or however you want to look at it.

But if there's no push back from anybody, if nobody's gonna do about it, he's gonna get away with it, like he does everything. "The law also left open the possibility that the president could impose additional requirements on grandfathered plans (except union plans.) Two months after Obamacare was passed, the IRS, Deptartment [sic] of Labor, and Department of Health and Human Services -- all reporting to the president -- churned out hundreds of additional rules to make it even harder for grandfathered plans to survive."

I cannot emphasize enough to you that this was the design. Despite the fact the president told you (everybody's playing these sound bites of the president saying all these different times), "You like your plan, you get to keep it." He never intended that, folks. If everybody in the country liked their plan and got to keep it, then there was no need for Obamacare, right? There was no need for any of this. You keeping your plan? Not good.

There was no way that Obama and the Democrats could advance their agenda if you get to keep your plan. So while the law said you would be grandfathered, the insurance companies were forced to make changes which destroyed your grandfather status. So, in other words, insurance plans have all kinds of things dumped on 'em by the government apart from the Obamacare mandates, and these make them have to adjust their plans -- like raise their rates.

So eventually all the plans will lose their grandfather status. Every damn one of them. There isn't anybody that's gonna be able to keep their plan, apparently, except unions. Their plans can be tweaked without losing their grandfather status, according to Betsy McCaughey. Obamacare can't compete with the supposedly bad old plans. It can't. Obamacare cannot offer something better, as you are learning.

What is Obamacare proving to you? Your rates go up. Your deductible goes up. Obamacare cannot match what you had, and therefore you were not gonna be allowed to keep it from the get-go. You were just lied to. So he had to make sure those old plans wouldn't survive for long, and now his regime is out dumping on the insurance companies, and that's what Sebelius has been doing all day -- dumping on the insurance companies -- and what can they do about it?

And what can they do about it? They got hoodwinked -- I'll never understand it -- into supporting this cockamamie BS from the get-go under the premise they've bought the notion they're gonna get all these brand-new customers. Folks, I don't know how to describe this, other than we are just surrounded by rank stupidity that is encouraged by the lure of massive amounts of money. That still doesn't eliminate the fact that the unions are still whining about it. And I don't know why. It is curious.

I'm assuming that Betsy McCaughey is right here, in what she has written. But even if she is, it doesn't eliminate the fact the unions are still complaining and whining about something. Maybe they don't know yet. Or maybe they didn't know when they were whining that they were grandfathered, and they were gonna keep their grandfather status.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Here's the part of the law that says union plans cannot lose their grandfather status if they tweak them. Quote, "Any coverage amendment made pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement relating to the coverage which amends the coverage solely to conform to any requirement added by [Obamacare] shall not be treated as a termination of such collective bargaining agreement."

So if your plan is the result of collective bargaining, no subsequent changes by anybody -- insurance companies, Obamacare -- can force your grandfathered policy to change. It was a carve-out. Collective bargaining is unions. So, in other words, union insurers can amend their coverage. Your insurance company can't. Well, your insurance company can, but you lose your grandfathered status when they do. Unions don't because they're covered under an amendment made pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement.

Now, is anybody hearing anyone from unions bellyaching about their plans being canceled? The unions were upset and they were whining, and then they went to the White House not long ago, and we haven't heard a peep out of 'em. All of these stories of insurance policy cancellations, I don't think any of them are union plans. I don't think any union people are complaining about it.

Now, about these cancellations. It really is preposterous to blame the insurance companies for the cancellations. That's what Sebelius did all day today. It's what Valerie Jarrett is doing. It's what Obama's doing. But it's preposterous. How does the insurance company benefit from canceling policies? They want to have as many people sign up with them as possible. But the Democrats have succeeded over the many decades in convincing low-information voters that corporations (and an insurance company or an agency or industry's a corporation) love to harm their customers. Big Oil does. Big Pharma likes to kill their customers. Big Tobacco likes to kill their customers. And Big Insurance loves hurting their customers. So most people would think it makes perfect sense the insurance company would cancel it because that's what they're there to do anyway, is inflict pain. That's what the Democrats have told them.